musings from an informed urban planner and an uninformed TV writer

From my notes, extreme frustration, March 16, 2006

It is typical of the development projects announced by the government in India that they are ambitious beyond belief — as cartoonishly outsized as the 80 foot hoardings of political leaders erected before elections. Consider the plan to develop the Taj Mahal into a mall and tourist complex, complete with cineplex. Or the Marina Beach development project, where the Tamil Nadu government was going to built a state of the art administrative complex on the seashore. There are no 2-lane highway projects, only 6-lane superfast highways.